Photosynthesising
by drjohnhwatson
Summary: He's okay with being a shadow of sorts, because it means he gets to live in The Sun.  John feels like he is blooming in Sherlock's rays, and maybe Sherlock is becoming who he needs to be too.


Hello, just something else while I get through College work.  
All credit to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Moffat/Gatiss for The BBC Series.

* * *

Looking at Sherlock Holmes, John Watson has decided, is like looking at the Sun; look at it for too long and you'll damage your eyes.  
John feels like he has brought warmth to his life again, (which is ironic because as a rule, Sherlock is quite a cold person) feels like he can see when Sherlock is around, feels like he is living off of the energy he emits, almost like he is photosynthesising.

Normality has not been something John has dealt with really. War is far from normal, far from predictable, far from safe. That's why it's so weird that when he is around Sherlock, it feels normal, even though Sherlock is far from normal, or predictable, or safe.

The experiments all feel normal. It's like standard issue to see Sherlock sitting at the table, absorbed in his microscope, or coming home to find severed fingers in a bowl of acid, to John now.  
The constant sarcastic remarks and comments are normal to him now, too. He realises that Sherlock gets frustrated easily and is liable to lash out, and so he keeps out of his way and deals with it. If he does end up on the receiving end of one of those, he makes sure that Sherlock knows he isn't happy, (usually by not making him a cup of tea when he makes himself one or going to bed early without saying anything) and then he waits for Sherlock to say (or mostly, to convey) that he is sorry (previous peace offerings have included cups of tea, a new medical journal, and once, even a whole meal from their favourite Chinese restaurant – John's favourite dish too, as of course Sherlock would know what it was – which are all usually left outside his bedroom door).  
Even the running around London is relatively normal, John thinks. Sure the War made him accustomed to such things, but in a different way. The running excites him here, scares him sometimes too, of course, but it pumps him full of adrenaline and promises, if silent ones, from Sherlock that seem to say "Stick with me and I'll give you something to live for. I'll show you what life is all about."

John doesn't know what, or even if, Sherlock thinks of this. He sometimes wonders, when he locks blue eyes with Sherlock's stormy grey's, if Sherlock can see all of this, can read him as easily as he reads his texts and emails.  
Sometimes he feels like it might not be such a bad thing if he could or can.  
Obviously he knows that Sherlock watches him.  
He watches everyone, though John feels that somehow this is different. It's like he's a particularly difficult puzzle that he can't quite work out. He wonders if that annoys the man.  
He seems to spend a lot of time wondering.  
Then again, it's not exactly surprising when the man he shares a flat with sometimes doesn't talk for days on end.  
That's part of the things that make him different to Sherlock. Sherlock doesn't wonder, he knows, or, if he doesn't know, he goes out and does something about it.

John likes to ponder, though.  
It's very nearly the only thing that keeps him sane.  
Although, he thinks, sanity is something almost elusive when you live with Sherlock Holmes.  
Maybe wondering about things like this all the time was his body's strange way of telling him that he was going insane.

Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing either.  
Sherlock often made him shake himself, made him think twice about things before jumping into situations. He wasn't quite sure how, because Sherlock was wild and unpredictable and probably never thought twice about jumping across a gap between two buildings or adding eyes to acid and then putting them in the microwave. He's kind of a contradiction like that, how he is logical and always thinking, but so ignorant about dangerous situations and particularly harmful experiments. If John wasn't there, how would Sherlock survive?.

It scares John sometimes, scares him silly really, to think that if anything happened to him, Sherlock would be mostly left to his own devices (of course, the young man had his brother, but there's only so much Mycroft can do – John wonders how Sherlock lived all the years before them).  
He isn't about to give it up willingly.  
It's part of him, the excitement, and he doesn't want it to go away.  
Sherlock is everything now.

He is wildly intelligent and fiercely unpredictable, a haze and a blur of quick colours and puzzle pieces slotted together, sometimes intimidating but always alluring, fascinating, so beautifully precise but so brilliantly, fantastically, ridiculously messy, wonderfully articulate, like the remnants of space are leaking from his fingertips as he moves, flowing, walking, running through the streets of London as if nothing, ever, could stop The Great Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. It's like he can touch everything, but see nothing at the same time, so focused and animalistic and predatory, catlike in limbs and gait and the way he would look at you, oh, those eyes. John would think they were looking right through you.  
It's a wonderment, each and every new day, and John lives on it, feeds from its light and warmth, opens his arms towards and welcomes it happily like a flower welcoming the Sun.  
John needs it, craves it so that he doesn't fall back into nightmares and visions of War.  
Sherlock keeps him afloat, keeps him alive in the sense that he is now nothing without him, without everything about him, the before, the now, the after and everything since and inbetween.  
Sherlock makes him feel alive, and as long as he is in the vicinity of The Sun, he will thrive, and in the moments he gets to touch briefly on the tendrils of the rays, he is blooming. He only hopes Sherlock is doing the same.

_Your smile, open it,_  
_Let me feel The Sun._  
_For I am nothing,_  
_without the rush of adrenaline,_  
_the rush of fear_  
_and excitement._  
_Blooming,_  
_throw your smile out and_  
_push it in my direction._  
_It's everything I thrive on and live for,_  
_and I will be your shadow if it means living in The Sun._


End file.
